A brutally violent but compelling Western starring Taylor Kitsch and Betty Gilpin, Netflix's ‘American Primeval’ is a fascinating tale.

Creator Mark L. Smith's six-episode examination of scruffy, vicious people traversing the Utah Territory in 1857 also stars Taylor Kitsch and Dane DeHaan.

The series, now streaming on Netflix, depicts the brutality with which the Mormons sought to create a new world for their beliefs, the pride with which the native people held onto their ancestral lands, and the tragedy of the people just seeking to make a new home in the chaos. But is any of it true?

Netflix's most ambitious western to date explores the conflicts that threaten to destroy pluralistic societies

The Western can be a deeply romantic genre with white hats and black hats, dusty streets and beautiful sunsets. Great films and TV series have broken with our rose-colored expectations of the American frontier,

However, it saps anything resembling wistfulness from its Hollywood Western roots, complicating its chances of cornering the post-Yellowstone market (alongside the latter's many spin-offs). What's left is the husk of a beloved genre,

Peter Berg directs an epic six-part drama about the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, in which more than 100 settlers were murdered by militant Mormons.

Do any of the characters in American Primeval survive? Here’s everything you need to know about how Netflix’s American Primeval ends… Finding it impossible to get through Netflix’s American Primeval without knowing what happens to our heroes?